


So Long Brother, What Have You Done To Me?

by osterran



Category: Matthias & Maxime (2019)
Genre: 30's crisis, Awakening, Jealousy, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26464654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osterran/pseuds/osterran
Summary: Max is gone, and Matthias can move on with his normal life. His regular job, regular couple life and regular relationship with his best friend.At least, that's how this was supposed to go down, but when Maxime has a confession to make, his best thought-out plans are once again compromised.
Relationships: Matthias Ruiz/Maxime Leduc
Comments: 37
Kudos: 79





	1. Une erreur de parcours

_So long brother, what have you done to me?  
It isn't the same as it was before,  
It's a history. _

Things almost seem to be going back to normal after Max is gone - a new normal, duller reality than the one before, but nothing Matt can’t handle. He got so close to throwing it all away, to give in to the doubts and lose his life and security over a passionate turn of events.

After some tumultuous weeks and some introspection on his part, he’d just declared this whole ordeal a misstep. A moment of confusion. It wasn’t this uncommon for two best friends, as straight as they came, to have a bit of a thing at some point, was it? After years and years of unequaled intimacy and understanding of each other, was it so strange to cross the line just this once?

(Or twice. And a half.)

As strong as it had felt then, at Shariff’s, isolated from the whole world, and as harrowing it had been to let him go at the airport keep a straight face in Frank’s car on the way back, this was nothing to sacrifice his whole life over for. 

He meant his current, balanced life with Sarah, but his relationship with Max as well. Someone he’d known for nearly his whole life under a certain status. He got so close to messing up one of the very foundations of his existence for something he couldn’t even properly name. Something that wasn’t them.

Paradoxically, not having Max around proves to be easier. There’s no denying the best-friend-shaped hole in his life, but there’s also no awkward dancing around each other and knowing looks to deal with. There is also no risk, no temptation for him to fall down this rabbit-hole once again. 

It’s not like Max is completely gone from their lives either: they make the most of the iPad they got for him to initiate a new Skyping routine. It’s Thursday and the whole gang is here over five different screens, five windows into their lives, that looks just like them. 

Rivette’s there first, in his family’s reading room. In the background, Matthias can see tomes and tomes on Brutalist architecture, couple psychology, and Swedish expressionist art. Frank and Brass meet ahead of the call and share a screen of their own, not exactly well angled for the two of them as it cuts Brass out every so often. The light is yellow and you can catch the corner of a few festival posters Matt feels like he’s seen his entire life now. Sharif joins in 15 minutes late, the backdrop of his call a Lebanon flag. And Maxime.

Maxime sits on his mattress - on the floor, no bed frame - in the corner of his room. The wallpaper is plain save for three pictures he tacked to it, all of them of his friends, none of his family. This feels childish and bittersweet. 

Matthias feels strangely self-conscious of the location he chose for his own call. It’s the same desk corner he settles in when he’s working from home and needs to call a client: simply white, empty, no distraction in sight. No indication of the person he could be once he’s not wearing a tie. These days, he’s not quite sure who this person is.

Despite what Matt predicted, they actually have quite some fun. Sarah pops up behind her early on to send a few kisses to the boys then waving them goodbye as she’s off for a few drinks with her girlfriends. Then they crack beer after beer, the call never getting any quieter even after they somehow found a balance in this strange communication. 

They talked about all sorts of trivial things the way they always did, like nothing has changed. Rivette’s dissertation, which he will be partly writing remotely from Montreal, Frank’s romantic setbacks and how Brass nearly got run over by a hipster on a segway - and if calling people hipsters is a sign that he is indeed aging? 

Inevitably, the latter eventually asks: 

"So Max! Max, how are the girls there?" 

With this, Matthias remembers a conversation he had with McAfee and how he had the best of times when he was sent in Sidney for work a while back; how all the surfer _chicks_ were tan and obsessed with healthy bullshit, always walking around in bikini tops and could drink him under the table. Every conversation with Kevin sounded a bit more of the same. He assumed he could trust about no part of this description as well.

But whatever spectrum McAfee and Maxime shared, they were on opposite ends of each other. 

"I don’t have time for that-"

The chat immediately hollers at him, save for Matt who smiles and takes another sip of his IPA. It doesn’t quite hit the spot though. He wishes he had something stronger and considers the average bottle of gin he keeps in their cart, but thinks nothing of it.

"You didn’t fuck off to the other side of the world to become a monk though," chips in Rivette  
"Yeah you did that quite well here," adds Sharif, which earns him a middle finger from Maxime, only making him grin a bit wider.  
"Ah - I don’t know, there’s this girl Aubrey, who works with me at the bar, she’s kinda sweet." 

Leave it to Max to lead in with this description. Matthias misses that gentleness in him that all the other guys at his office lack completely, always bro-ing out and competing in everything in life.

"I mean I guess there’s also..."

The chat goes quiet, mimicking Matt who has not uttered a word in the past five minutes, but Max doesn’t finish his sentence. That’s about the worst thing he could do as all of his friend gang up on him in an incomprehensible string of shouts. None of it makes sense but the feeling is clear. Although he’s been somewhat disconnected from this subject, not really eager to hear about Max's dating experiences, but he finds their hubbub endearing.

Maxime, who is good at keeping to himself but one of the worst liars to walk this earth once the cat is out of the box, can see that he is cornered and sighs painfully. There’s no way out. 

"I guess there’s like, this guy who seems quite keen. I don’t know he’s a regular-"

Matt can’t quite catch the rest of the sentence, because his ears start ringing and Brass and Rivette shout some more at him. It’s an alternating mix of surprise and excitement, he’s not quite sure of the specifics. He feels like someone has just dropped a bucket of warm water all over him. Everything is hot and slightly dizzy. Now would be a great time to get this gin, maybe even crack up the better brand.

"What the fuck? Since when do you fancy guys as well?" Brass lets out with his characteristic tactfulness. Frank punches his shoulder and everybody else piles on him as it often happens. Matt would have chimed but he doesn’t feel quite , _there._

"I don’t, or I didn’t, I don’t know." Max looks hesitant, like he doesn’t know how to even put words on this thing. Each new one is like a punch in Matt’s guts. "He insisted and I figured, why not, you know?"  
"Well hey cheers to that!" says Sharif, who seems genuinely chuffed.  
"New place, new Max!" Frank adds.  
"Chill out guys, it’s just one date, it’s nothing."

More noise, and agitation. Rivette calls his name twice before Matt actually processes it. 

“You ok there? Haven’t heard you in a while.” 

He actually isn’t, and he hopes he isn’t making it too obvious to the chat - and to one of them in particular, whose troubled eyes seem to stare at him directly through the camera, although that’s not possible. It’s like August all over again, with the anger and the disorientation. He stands up and puts on his steadiest voice.

“Yeah all good, my beer’s just empty, hang on.”

In the kitchen, Matthias rubs his hand against his mouth. Although these feelings are now too familiar, there is a new sense of panic creeping into him that he can’t quite identify - or control. He is jittery, his heel knocking against the door of the kitchen counter where they keep all the baking tins. Back in the office nook, the shouts raising from his computer, no longer endearing, make him even more anxious. 

No part of him wants to go back to socializing now, so he bends sideways to his screen to interrupt his friends who are now talking about something as trivial as australian cricket. 

“Guys, Sarah just got home so I’m just gonna log off now ok?”

But she’s not, she actually wouldn’t be before an hour or so. 

Before they can even express much of a protest, he gives them the most insincere wave and urgently slams his laptop off so he can’t even catch a glimpse of Max’s expression, which he knows must be disappointed. History just fucking repeats itself in his case, because apparently, he never learned. He separated himself from the group like he did back in August before Sarah forced him to go to the party - except she’s not there to do so now or to catch the mess of a boyfriend that he is, thank god. 

He needs to calm down, so he does pour himself a first glass of gin, which he downs, and another one, which he carries around as he walks in a circle in his living-room.

This isn’t at all how this was supposed to be. This had just been a mistake, _une erreur de parcours_ , something that couldn’t be explained but that didn’t need to make sense, because _it wasn’t them._ He’d said that back at the party, meant it, when Maxime had slipped his fingers in his unbelted jeans, a hot breath against him. They were straight, so this was nonsensical, no reason to trash their whole friendship over.

They would go their own way, not pacing at midnight over unsaid things, throat tight, cheeks flushed and a knot in their stomachs. There wasn’t supposed to be any regrets, any what ifs, no overbearing feeling of _unfairness._

By the time he stands up to get himself another drink, his phone pings in his pocket with a notification from their group chat. Rivette has taken a screenshot of their conversation, probably some moment before it all went downhill for him. Mindlessly, his two fingers zoom in on the bottom right corner of the picture, where Max smiles in the australian late morning sun, contrasting with their own timezone. 

Suddenly, he misses him just has much as he did when he hugged him at the airport, just as painfully as he did in the car. In contrast, the following weeks had felt like a trick, seemingly easy, like letting him leave wasn’t going to be such an unbearable pain in the end - yet here he is. 

It wasn’t supposed to feel like this.

_Fuck._


	2. One million dollars question

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Like they say, things can only get better and in Matt's case, they certainly don't.

_I know, brother, that I am all you need_  
_How do you think I feel when you decide to leave?_

In a very ludicrous turn of events, things actually get even worse.

It’s a Saturday night and Sarah stares at him in the eyes, unwavering.

« I think we need a break. »

Matt had seen it coming and he hadn’t.

Saying that he had no outlet for everything going in his mind would be unfair to his girlfriend. She had tried by all means possible to get him to talk to her, and he never did. So of course, when she decides that they should go to that Thai place they both liked - but wasn’t their favourite - and drops this bomb as soon as they hand back their menus, he is surprised. But he isn’t _surprised_.  
  
Losing Sarah in so close succession to losing his best friend was not something that Matthias thought he could handle though - especially after all the things he considered having sacrificed for their relationship - and so after a few seconds, he figures out a less than eloquent answer.

“Why?” Not his best work.  
“You can’t be surprised, Matt?”

The least he could do for once was to be truthful so he doesn’t play dumb.

“I can fix it.”  
“I don’t think you can.” She immediately reaches out for his hand before he can answer. “And I’m not asking you to. Not now. I think we both need to work out on some things, don’t you think?”  
“I thought we had something important here - fuck, Sarah, it’s been two years, can’t we talk about it?”

She pursues her lips.

“I love you, Matt. And next year I’ll be thirty and I can really see us getting married and-”  
“Then why all this?” He cuts her off “Sarah, this is insane- I love you too, I don’t want any of this.”

I don’t want to be alone.

Sarah takes a short breath, like she’s bracing herself to add something. It can’t be easy to do what she’s doing, especially when Matt is not giving her anything.

He remembers a day, a couple of years back, a lazy Sunday afternoon stuck in time. Maxime had been laying on his bed scrolling on his phone as he sat on the floor. He’d said, _get that, apparently, break ups release some bunch of endorphins to your brain, that’s why you act stupid and all needy_.

He must drift away, even for a brief second, because Sarah catches this once more and looks disappointed. Matthias is tired of seeing this expression on the faces of people he loves.

« It’s because I think you’re the one that I need to take some time. Don’t you want to make sure of that yourself? »

And how exactly was he supposed to do this on his own?

If he is being very honest here, Matthias had barely ever been single. He’d always been that guy, serial monogamist since they left high school. He just felt comfortable in the presence of someone who looked up to him, who could be his special person and share some of the things he didn’t feel like he could share with anybody. Sarah had been that, for a long time, or at least she got so close to be ; but not for a long time. She’d done way more than meeting him halfway, but even that hadn’t been enough.

Maybe she is expecting an answer, like many other things, but Matt can’t find anything to say to that. She’s not holding his hand anymore, both of hers clutching her glass. Her fingers are long and manicured, a greyish pink on her nails. She rarely ever wears rings. Maybe this is what he should have done already, make a big move and put one on her. All of her friends are engaged, having babies. He can think of so many ways this would have been catastrophic.

“You can keep the flat until we both find something” she says, ever so sweet and pragmatic.  
“You don’t have to do that.”  
“I’m ok, my sister leaves near the office. I don’t suppose you’d like to stay at Francine’s.”

He chuckles at that and getting a smile from him warms up her expression. Speaking of his mother, she is never going to let him live this down. Maybe she’ll even try to get her back for him, he wouldn’t put it past her.

They finish eating with minimal conversation, very practical and depressing. No dessert. He pays the whole bill, which isn’t much, and probably eager to get over this whole ordeal, she doesn’t fight it. When they get outside the night is already pretty deep and chilling. The hug they share feels like a brief shelter as she rubs the palm of her hand on his back, almost content.

“I’m gonna do the work.” he tells her and feels her nodding, indulging him.

It gets awkward for a minute when they realise they both have to take the same bus and Matt pretends he needs to go buy some cigarettes anyway. He ends up chain-smoking into Saturday night, aimless. It’s still early in October and the streets are still busy with new uni students, fresh-faced and unstoppable. They laugh out loud, huddled on small benches around tables littered with bottom shelf beers and cheap rolling tobacco.  
As he gets close to letting nostalgia take over him, a guy taps on his shoulder, a lopsided smile on his face and a bored brunette by his side.

“Do you mind?” he gestures at his hand, which holds an unlit cigarette.

He looks like your everyday art school student, sporting a busted hat with an absurd brand and a windbreaker. He’s blonde and his lips are full. He’s taller than Maxime - and chastises himself for so naturally connecting the two. He grabs his lighter in his inside pocket and shelters the flame he creates to turn on the cigarette. The guy doesn’t stop staring as he does and Matt isn’t oblivious enough to miss the tension of it.

As soon as the cigarette is lit though the girl sighs out loud, clearly accustomed to his antics, and pulls him by the arm as they stagger back to their group of friends, tipsy. Matt absentmindedly wonders if she’s used to him picking out loners who just got dumped.

Back home in his empty apartment, he drops on his couch, listless and glum. He pulls out his phone and thinks about sharing the events of the night with someone, anyone. A couple of months ago, he would have called Max without a second thought to talk it out - and he still could, after all it’s still early in the afternoon back in Australia.Yet for some reason, the image of the student in the blue and green lights of the shoddy bar shows up in the back of his mind, and Sarah’s ringless hand around her glass, and he puts his phone on the coffee-table screen down.  
So much for doing the work.

___  
  


Eventually, after almost a full week, he does come clean to his friends when they gather at the pub after work - save for Shariff, who has a date. After getting rightfully reprimanded for hiding the truth, silence falls on the group. None of them feels too surprised by the news Matthias notices, and he wonders just how much of a prick he must have been as of late.  
Brass sighs in his beer.

“Wow. End of an era.”  
“How’re you holding up though?” Frank inquires.

Matt’s only answer is to make a face and give a noncommittal shrug. He’s fine. Granted he could be doing better but a voice in him tells him he should definitely feel more disheartened by the whole situation.

“Did you call Max?” Frank adds.

He shakes his head and the reprimands roar again, immediately making him jumpy.

“What? He’s busy, what’s he going to do about it anyway?”  
“Gods, why are you being such a twat about this?” Rivette complained.

Because, _you psychoanalyzing douche_ , maybe opening up about your recent breakup to someone you just passionately frenched in a shed with wasn’t exactly the easiest or smartest thing to do.

  
Matt feels grateful for Frank, who changes the subject. His landlord is being a jerk recently and he’s been looking into getting a new flat - _should we be roommates then, Matt_? _The bachelor life!_ He chuckles, they chat, drink their two pints, and they’re gone. Pretty much as soon as he leaves the bar, Matthias decides to get his phone.

The line rings four times and he’s not sure whether he’s hoping for Max to pick up or not. But eventually he does, and his genuine and drawn out greeting warm up Matt’s mood almost instantly.

“Oh, hey! He’s alive!”  
“Barely.” he chuckles, a bit sheepish.  
“It’s good to hear you- hold on, hold on.”

There’s some rustle on the other end of the line, like Max is settling down. For a few, blessed minutes, he fills him in about his new life and Matt listens to him with a smile on his face. As he passes by a shop and sees his own reflection in the blacked out window, he tries to make up for his friend’s absence.

Not long after, he does realise that perhaps he should have waited to be home to make this call, as he shuffles awkwardly in the street when he drops the life-changing news.

“So, it’s over. Sarah and I. She said she needed some time, or something.”

‘Or something’ sure wasn’t the most appropriate way to do justice to a two-years relationship but that’s all he could come up with. None of this was ideal. For a moment, Max is just silent on his side.

“Shit. Fuck. Are you ok?”  
“I mean, I’m fine.”  
“I thought you were in a good phase and all.”

For a second, Matt wonders what he’s referring to when he remembers a conversation they had, back at the gym, before they made their way to a weekend he certainly wouldn’t forget, no matter how much he tried.  
“That was ages ago, it’s-” he feels himself getting frustrated already and tones it down, scratching his thumb against his eyebrow “A lot happened since then.”

 _We_ happened since then, he doesn’t add. He doesn’t even know if that’s what he means by it, but it is the truth. Hell, he doesn’t even know if this has to do with anything, if Sarah had any suspicion about them in any shape or form or if him being a “twat”, like Rivette diagnosed him so nicely, was enough to justify a breakup. Both could be true.  
As if he’s reading his mind, Max asks:

“Did she say anything special?”  
“She just needed a break, to think on some things.”  
“Oh. That’s… good right?”

The fact that Max is usually so expressive makes this phone call even more disheartening. Or at least, he is to Matt, who has had years of experience learning the way he can wear his heart on his sleeve. Recently, he’d been trying so hard to look the other way but now, he wishes he could understand the tone in his voice, if this is hesitant support or something else.

  
Similarly to his conversation with Sarah at the Thai place, he knows he’s not being very helpful but Matt can’t help but be somewhat petulant about it. Not knowing what to do with his body in public, he sits down on a low wall.

  
“I don’t know, I guess?”  
“Well, it’s what you want isn’t it?”  
“What is?”“Sarah, Matt. What else? It’s what you want?”

  
That is the one million dollar question, the one he got broken up with for, at the end of the day. The reason why he was sent on a quest for self-discovery. But there must only be an answer: this is what he wants. A girlfriend, and a steady job with extra time and wine tasting nights and double dates with work colleagues he barely even tolerates. There’s only one possible answer to the question.

  
“Yeah, yeah of course.”

  
He gives a few more details but rapidly tries to move away the conversation, which Max seems to agree with. Eventually, they manage to reach out their subject of choice: their friends.

  
“So Shariff’s got a date right?”  
“Yeah, Tinder I think? He’s bringing her to that place that Brasilian place with the cocktails, it’s a terrible idea.”  
“Jesus, it’s terrible alright.”

  
They should continue talking about this. Sweet Shariff and the caipirinhas he must be sharing with this new match, and how he misses him, how they all do and how it doesn’t feel quite right for all of them to be hitting these new milestones without him here. Instead, Matt, who’s had just enough beers to be lucid yet forward can’t help but asking:

  
“What about you?”  
“What about me?”  
“Are you gonna say yes? To that guy?”  
“Tom?”

  
The simple fact that he has a name irritates Matthias, although that was expected. Maxime doesn’t quite answer for a while and Matt wants to punch someone. Maybe start with himself for having no sense of self-preservation whatsoever.

  
“Is that really what you want to talk about?”  
“Why not?”  
“You know why not.”

  
Max would have every right to match his tone, be brash and forward but instead he just sounds uncomfortable - yet Matt doesn’t back down.

  
“Why didn’t you say anything?”  
He sighs, but it’s almost a moan, painful. “I did, fuck, it’s not even anything-”  
“You didn’t, you didn’t even tell me-”  
“What? That I-”

It’s unfair of him to coax out some sort of coming out from him like this and in this situation, but it’s like he has no control over this conversation anymore. Like he doesn’t have any control over anything, over his life and over Max’s life who fucked away, so far away from him. He just wants things to make sense again.

  
“That I liked guys, maybe? I didn’t fucking know Matt.”

  
Hearing the words gives him whiplash and he can’t repress a dry laugh, which escapes his tightening throat. Restless and bitter, he stands up abruptly, attracting bystanders’ attention.

  
“I _don’_ t know.” Max amends “I wasn’t- Shit, I wasn’t preying on you for years, if that’s what you think.”  
“This isn’t what I meant.”  
“What did you mean then? Because these days it just sounds like you always want to fight. Listen, I gotta go.”  
“Yeah, me too.”

  
He doesn’t. No one is waiting for him to come back home nor is he looking forward to being welcomed by an empty flat. But his whole conversation is a trainwreck with no chance of survivors and Matthias just lies and pushes away all the obsessive thoughts that loop in his mind and that would all sound better than any of this. He should say: I’m sorry. Or: I miss you. I want to understand what you’ve done to me - what we are doing to each other.

The line goes dead in his ear.

Ten minutes later, he’s sitting on a bench when his phone chimes, still in his hand. For a brief, hopeful second, he picks it up to open up the guys’ group chat. He doesn’t know what he’s hoping to read but it’s only Shariff, sending them an update on his ongoing date.

  
_Shariff (21:47): she’s polish, very cool accent_  
_Shariff (21:50): so I’m thinking? 2, 3 children?_

  
He puts his phone on silent, gets in his bus, and that’s the end of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, thank you so, so very much for all the comments on the first part, I surely did not expect those.  
> I'm sorry if this chapter is not exactly exciting (although not uneventful) but I'm completely new to multi-chapters writing and couldn't see myself stop anywhere else. I'd still like this to be around 4-5 parts, the first one was short in comparison and chapters might be unequal in lenght but I won't that won't stop you from enjoying it still.
> 
> You can find me for a chat at osterra-n on tumblr!


	3. Phantom Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite how hard he tries to keep certain things at bay, eventually they do catch up with Matthias. This time, he might have to address them somehow.

Turns out that Frank does need to leave his place pretty much yesterday as his asshole landlord wants to do “some renovation”. Luckily for him, a friend of a friend is going to India for a couple of months and needs a subrenter. Just like that, the week-end is spent packing away with Matthias and Rivette. 

Frank has the most eclectic collection of belongings anyone has ever seen. Kettlebells used as holders for a variety of books from Kafka to Lovecraft. T-shirt from the 2014 and 2017 runs for breast cancer. A collection of hats with the most absurd logos. There’s a footstool shaped as a bear from a hunting brand that Matt knows for a fact costs over a hundred dollars and a pineapple shaped lamp from that time four years ago when everything was shaped like a pineapple. 

“What’s that?” Matt asks as he picks up a box in his closet.  
“Ah, that’s Max’s. He left me a bunch of stuff.”

Matt is no longer surprised at how quickly they always circle back to him, like his absence only makes them gravitate stronger around him. He looks at the box in his hands, small and unassuming, and represses his desire to go through it. He doesn’t even wonder why Frank is the one trusted with safe-keeping and not him, easily remembering how he’d been absent this weekend. 

He sets the carton alongside the others on the bed. When he looks back up, they’re both staring at him.

“What?”  
“Heard you guys fought.”  
Matt lets out a frustrated sigh. “It’s fine, it’s nothing.”  
“Oh yeah?” Rivette chips in. “What was it, Jesse Owens again or another olympic?” 

Although Matt isn’t keen on reminiscing this evening for various reasons, fair on Rivette to rub it in. He did explode at them over a fishbowl game. Relentless Rivette, always first in line to put him back in his place, would never let him forget. 

The thing is, he wonders how much both of them know about Max and him. Rivette is always picking up on things, if not for torturing material later on. He even was the one responsible for their kiss and the mess that ensued and had followed him around with a knowing look and a dramatic Mozart playlist. Frank remembered their teenage affair. He’s Max’s closest confident these days and he was there to drive them at the airport. It wouldn’t take much for the two of them to put the pieces together and draw some conclusions. 

Not that Matt has even been able to do it himself.

There’s no point in pretending they don’t exactly know what the reason for the fight was, at least on the surface.

“Did you know about it?”  
“By it, I assume you mean him <i>potentially</i> liking men as well because, I, a homosexual, must know these things, right?”  
“His gaydar’s fucked too, remember Paul Cormier? Not his best work.” Frank comments, fetching for his cigarettes pack in his bomber, which lays on a chair.  
  
Rivette rolls his eyes. “Point is, I didn’t, not really, but why does it matter?”  
  
“It doesn’t, he can do whatever he wants.” Matt answers defensively. “It’s just- we’ve known each other forever and he tells us now? It’s stupid.”  
“You afraid that he was hiding it from you? Why? Because he secretly wanted to snog you? Get over yourself Ruiz, you’re not all that irresistible.”  
“Plus what’s he gonna do? He’s on the other side of the world, why are you so weird about it?”  
“What the fuck is going on, is this an intervention or something?” Matt starts to protest.

Coming in ex machina, Frank’s phone rings in his pocket and he picks it up to read the caller’s id. It’s asshole landlord, for perhaps the fourth time of the day, and so he grunts disapprovingly but makes his way outside to answer, leaving the two others alone. 

It is somewhat enough to release a little bit of the tension. They look at each other in silence and Matthias sits on the bed, near the ‘Max’ box. When Rivette speaks, his voice is softer than the usual digs he likes to throw at him.

“Must be a first for you, the idea of not being the main guy in his life, I get it.”  
“Marco, I don’t care if he’s gay.”  
“Listen, I know you’re hanging with a lot of boomers at work and are on a slippery slope to turn into one but I’m pretty sure he isn’t.”  
“Either way. It doesn’t matter to me. Why would it matter?”  
“I don’t know. You tell me.” 

When Frank comes back, they don’t reach this subject again, too busy to pack away everything in his beat up car and curse the owner. At the end of the day, he trusts Matt with the box, on the basis that he doesn’t have much space at his new place. Although Matt thinks that this isn’t exactly the truth, he doesn’t say so, and accepts.

___

The day after the move, Matthias begrudgingly agrees to go to Francine’s for lunch, just the two of them - since she doesn’t know yet about Sarah, and he doesn’t feel like announcing the news on the phone. It’s been nearly three weeks now, and he hasn’t said a word about it. He’s keenly aware that the longer he waits, the more painful she will make it for him. 

When he does tell her the truth, she immediately asks him what he’s done wrong and he snaps back as he sets the table in the dining-room. It’s always great to get this sort of vote of confidence from your own mother.

Eventually though, she does get off her high horses and they manage to have a nice, rather refreshing conversation, just the two of us them. It’s been a long time since this happened. He’d always be coming around encouraged by Max or his girlfriend and was systematically put on the spot in their presence, which just aggravated him. 

Unsurprisingly, the conversation circles back to Maxime, her perfect, honorary son. The one who does call her on a regular basis. His absence has become impossible to ignore, always reminded whenever Matthias enters a room, like he was missing a limb ; the separation felt like a phantom pain. 

While he nudges his rice pudding with no interest in picking up any of it anymore, Francine, blessedly unaware, stands up to grab something she ‘found while going through some archives’ - she’s always doing this, restlessly moving things around. It’s an old Kodak enveloppe. 

In it is a pile of photographs from perhaps fifteen years ago. Matt wants to indulge her, he really does, but he stops browsing at the second picture. He recognizes himself, brooding, hair too long and shaggy, already growing some embarrassing facial hair, looking away from the camera. Wrapped around his shoulder in a much better mood is Max, but his hair is shorter and his arms don’t bear any ink yet - but Matt spots the earring stud he’d just got done, already eager to mark and appropriate his body in some way. 

The next picture looks very similar, but they’re both grinning. Max had probably managed to make him smile for the camera. It’s always been a talent of his. 

Thinking about it, this couldn’t have been too far from that kiss they shared, just like that, in the corner of Karine Lemercier’s living room. He stares at this younger, denser - and quite frankly ridden with hormones - version of himself like he’s going to tell him why he let this happen. 

Francine squeezes his shoulder and he nods with a smile, promising to share them.

___  
  
The photographs actually seem like a perfect olive brand in Max’s direction. They haven’t spoken since their catastrophic phone conversation and Matt, who always avoids phrasing anything resembling an apology, takes a picture with his phone. Then, without a word, he sends them to Max and sets the phone near him on the couch, waiting, having nothing better to do. 

The phone rings a couple minutes later and he all but jumps to answer. Maxime speaks first. 

“Why would you send me that?”

Matt’s heart misses a beat at first but he quickly catches on his tone, more amused and cringing than angry. 

“Thought you’d like to suffer with me.”

Max’s laugh chimes in his ear and he shuffles further into his couch until he’s staring at the ceiling. 

It’s always been like that, between the two of them. Matthias, doing or saying something rash and always incapable of a proper apology; and then Maxime, waiting with open arms, patient, reading through the lines because he knows him better than anyone. 

Although he accepts it with relief, Matt isn’t sure he deserves yet another chance so easily, not after the letter and the distance and outbursts and the kiss - this goddamn kiss. 

For the first time since they separated, they actually talk for a long, very long time. This strange conversation feels reminiscent of the never ending phone calls from their childhood, when they would chat away for hours, even though they’d seen each other for the entire day, and even though ten years old shouldn’t have that much to even talk about. 

Matt has made his way to his bed, still fully dressed, when all of a sudden, Max notices the time.

"Shit, hey, Matt, isn’t it one back home? Don’t you have work in the morning?"

He still calls it home, Matthias notes.

"I guess I better go." he admits, his voice hoarse and tired. 

And even though a voice in his head yells him to leave it there, enjoy the night they had and not make things worse, he can hear himself ask, like an out-of-body experience:

"Just, one thing.”

"Yeah?"

"You said you didn’t know, about you and guys."

Max just hums. He’s probably surprised that Matt would even bring the subject again. He does tend to avoid talking about the things he fucked up. Like you’d avoid coming back to a crime scene.

Is it because of me?"

"Matt, you- »

"I know, I know you weren’t preying on me" _because I kissed you_ "and this isn’t about me" _but it’s definitely about us_ "and you don’t just turn people gay, I know all that, and it’s not what I mean it’s just-"

For a second, his raving makes him forget what he’s meant to ask and Maxime is dead silent on the other end of the world. So Matt passes a hand on his face as he closes his eyes and braces himself. 

"Is it because of Shariff’s?"

"I don’t know. I guess… I guess it made me think about things."

Thé sheer honesty of this answer is what has always differentiated them and yet it still takes him aback. Matthias had tried his best to ignore this thing between them, not giving it a name, not thinking about what it could mean for him, even running away from it at night. And Max, sensitive and sensible Max, who never thinks much of himself, has double the courage he has. 

"Are we good?"

Matthias ignores the heavy feeling in his stomach as he stares at the stack of pictures on the nightstand.

"Of course we are."

___ 

For a while, everything goes back to normal. A new normal, without Max, but somewhat made bearable by the nearly daily calls they share. 

Tired of the takeaways and depressingly simple meals he’s been making for himself as a recent bachelor, Matt starts cooking again, balancing his ipad on a pile of recipes books on his counter to talk to his best friend. They get into series, commenting the whole time. Max mostly works in the evening, which means his mornings can be shared.

He also likes to call him on his way to work, hearing about his days, seemingly sunny and with not a worry on the horizon. All is well.

He does meet regularly with the gang, hosting at his flat more often over the course of the following weeks than he has for the past year. Sarah still has the keys. She comes around one time when he’s away to pick up more of her things. Out of the things that are left, nothing seems of value. It looks like his promotion is on the table once again so Matt decides not to really think about rent at the moment - or about anything at all.

Diving into work seems to help. When he isn't, he stares at his colleagues with fascination and contempt. He remembers Rivette, scrolling through his Grindr profile with a scowl. _I swear these days it’s only the repressed gays, the regretful guys in their 50’s. They all look like they work with you as well._ Matthias can see it ; the suit-wearing, shit-talking, wife-hating prototype. When he looks at his reflection in the lift, he wonders how much of him fits the bill - and how much of him eventually will.

At the end of the day, when he is finally alone with his own thoughts, he feels too tired to push them away. More than once he ends up alone at bars, looking at women and men, gauging his own reactions to them. The fact that he has not had any sort of sexual encounter with anybody in a while does encourage his mind to explore more than he’d prefer. 

His eyes wander over details that inevitably remind him of someone else ; a pretty mouth, a tattoo, maybe a birthmark. He thinks about how people other than him may enjoy these things in Maxime and how he can’t do anything about it - how his actions even led to this situation. This all feels like an elaborate return on karma. 

He orders another drink. 

Back home and intoxicated, Matt gets himself off with familiar porn sites but brand new keywords. Slams his laptop shut in shame. Rinses and repeats. 

___ 

When he lays at night, he misses Sarah, and he misses Max. His mind oscillates between the two of them, both kind and beautiful. He thinks about their remnants in his life, two summer dresses in his cupboard and the box under his bed, with on top of it three capital letters that haunt him. 

___ 

  
December rolls in so quickly and Christmas with it. Matthias survives the office parties, terrible Secret Santas and colleagues who tipsily try to go home with him. An inibriated fuck might do him some good but he knows better than to get with someone from work. 

As he’d predicted, Maxime doesn’t come back. Matt spends the time between Boxing Day and New Year’s feeling glum once again, at odds with the overall festive spirit. On New Year’s, he celebrates with the boys. He remembers how he swore off this lifestyle to Sarah in the car after his mother's garden party - yet here he is. He doesn't mind though, he thinks as they chastise Brass for breaking a lamp trying to open a Champaign bottle. 

They try to call Max despite the saturated signal and the timezone difference and struggle to establish a connection. 

This lasts for a few confusing minutes before the screen freezes on a single frame for the rest of the evening, yet another picture to add to Matt's mental collection. Scanning through the pixelated image, he swears Max is looking sad, but that could just be wishful thinking.

___

It’s already February when it happens. 

Matt is on his way to work and about to make his way into the building when Max calls him at 9:20 in the morning.

"Hey, how’s it going? Thought you’d be calling me tonight - or like, tomorrow, you know."

"Something happened, I- I'm coming home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much for your kind comments. I'm actually enjoying writing this as it allows me to tap into some memories of my friends - and eventually, some feelings that I know that gangs like Matt's can experience in their late twenties. So I feel quite close to a lot of the themes from this movie and I'm glad to see that some of you are taking the time to leave a nice note.


	4. 4:02 AM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They still haven't talked and Matthias has to face the possibility that their frienship might never be the same because of it. Yet, Maxime needs him around more than ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very sorry if this is much later than the first three chapters. Turns out I needed a whole lot of reorganisation. My apologies if this is significantly longer as well, I still can't bear to see this take more than 5 chapters nor could I cut this in a more satisfying way. Hope you enjoy it anyway!

Manon is missing. 

So far, that’s all they know. One day, Ginette comes around to check on things and she was just gone. Max and her both think that she may have rekindled with a friend or an ex and fucked off with them, as she still has no access to any kind of money. Matt shudders thinking about this possibility and can’t quite contain his anger: Manon’s boyfriends have never been good news - and Maxime, who’d gone through all sort of abuse, could testify of that. 

Even if they never stuck around, they could clearly still do enough damage. 

Of course Manon is not the type to leave a note behind and Max, who fled as far as he possibly could from this whole ordeal in the first place, cannot bear to stay away. And so, just like that, he is forced to come back to Montreal and back into Matt’s life in a matter of days. 

Fully determined to make the most out of a terrible situation, the whole gang decides to go and pick him up at the airport. Frank and Brass even call in sick at work to be there, and they resort to using Rivette’s family car to fit in everybody - they’d have to crank up the folding seat in the trunk and shove whoever would be the slowest back there later on. Matthias, who’s been the tallest for years now, has almost always been ensured to ride shotgun. The whole atmosphere is so electric that it almost doesn’t look like they’re on their way to pick up a friend in the middle of a crisis.

Matt feels oddly stressed out. There isn’t enough time before the arrivals hall to decide how they would be acting around each other from now on. Having Max live on the other side of the world certainly simplified this for him. He shuffles around awkwardly in the busy airport before Max steps in from the security doors, immediately spotting them. 

His hair looks different. It’s slightly longer on top and the faintest curls contrast against his sun kissed skin. If it wasn’t for the crazed look in his eyes and the hours of plane ride in economy, he’d actually look quite healthy. Matt can’t really explain why his stomach coils the way it does.

He can barely make it into the hall that his friends pile up around him for a rather childish group hug and, in the midst of their chaotic embrace, Maxime’s eyes meet his own, straightforward and warm. Suddenly, and although he isn’t the one who should need to be taken care of, Matt feels steadier. 

The gang untangles and they make their way towards each other, sharing a hug just a second longer than it would have been in the past. It is almost strange to feel this body he knows so well against his own again. Matthias keeps his arm around his back as his friends come closer and gives his shoulder a squeeze. 

“How’re you feeling?” enquires Brass as Frank grabs Max’s bag.   
“Like I’ve been run over, several times.”   
“Well it’s jolly good to see you.” Rivette says as he gets his car keys out. “Now come on kids, get in the van because dad’s not paying for an extra thirty minutes.”   
“Don’t call yourself daddy, you know that turns me on.” Shariff snickers, earning himself the back row seat. 

They all drive back to his place where Martine welcomes them, even more agitated than usual with anxiety. Francine happens to be there as well in an even worse state and Matt can feel himself grow a headache but he tries his best not to act out in Max’s presence. She embraces him like he’s the prodigal son.

They all pile up in the fancy living-room and get working. Sadly, this isn’t the first time something of the sort has happened and Maxime knows all too well what to do next. He lays out all of his mother’s friends’ names and numbers, the places they found her in in the past, and other things that might be useful. They call banks and hospitals and reach out to randos on Facebook, somberly gathered around the Rivette’s flowery living-room set. This is not exactly the sort of welcome back party they were hoping to one day throw for their friend. 

At some point, Francine comes around to tap on her son’s shoulder.

“Come around and make yourself useful in the kitchen.”   
“What do you even think I’m doing?” he half-whispers as Max, who’s sitting next to him on the couch, is deep into a phone call. 

But he quickly gives up and stands up, joining her and madame Rivette in the kitchen. They’re getting everything ready to make some sandwiches and drinks. Matt looks at the rather kitsch clock on the wall: they have been going at it for hours.

“Max must be exhausted, having to do that after what, a 16 hours flight?”   
“Poor dear, that’s not a life.” 

She’d said that once already, and Matt realises this was during Erika’s movie, in that very living-room. He thinks about the magnified projection of himself kissing Max over the wall and how this somewhat ghostly image still holds so much power over him. 

“Oh but he is looking good isn’t he? With the-” she just gestures over her own head, probably referring to his new haircut.   
“And a nice tan too, what a beautiful boy.”

Matthias rolls his eyes as if he hadn’t thought somewhat similar things when he’d seen his friend at the airport. 

“Does he have a special someone back there, Matt?”   
“I don’t know.”   
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Francine protests “Don’t best friends tell each other these things?”   
“I said I don’t know, we just don’t discuss that.”

She scoffs and throws her hands to the sky before getting back to slicing the crust of some white bread.

“All you boys used to be so chatty. Always yapping around with each other.” Madame Rivette chips in “Don’t you just talk anymore?”   
“When we were like, nine, what’s this about?”

She shakes her head, focused on the obscure, probably fancy fruits she’s cutting into a salad.

“It’s a shame. That’s how it is, I guess. It’s like they teach men to be so macho and all that, not to talk about their feelings - can you put the kettle on?”   
“Just like Matt’s father was. Oh he spoke the loudest, for sure.”

Francine opens the cabinet and issues enough tea cups for everybody.

“But he sure never talked about the right things.”

From the kitchen, through the open door, Matthias looks at Maxime, who seems finished with his call. He looks tired, rubbing his face with the palm of his hand. From where he is, he can see the stain spreading over his cheek up to his eye.

He picks up the kettle and makes some coffee. 

They unanimously elect to take a break and have some of the food prepared for them. Maxime, who probably hasn’t eaten anything in nearly a day, barely touches his and follows Frank outside for a smoke break. Matt tags along without a word. 

The night is deep and cold, the smell of imminent snow in the air and the three of them smoke in silence for a minute, the very sound they make as they exhale sounding exhausted. The mothers and Rivette can be heard discussing something animatedly in the kitchen.

The plan is the following: Max is staying only ten days in Montreal to sort out this terrible situation and then just like that, he’ll return to Australia like nothing happened. His brother seems very unhelpful about the whole situation - apparently, he is in Toronto at the moment and could not be bothered to grace everybody with his physical presence during a crisis. 

Ginette, as sweet as she is, isn’t doing much better despite being around. She’d sometimes call Max and could be heard just flailing around, constantly apologizing and swearing over the phone. Matt is starting to get a feeling as to why Max always wanted to escape. 

The latter is too knackered to contain a shiver. 

“Half a year in kangaroo-land and he can’t handle the temperature?” Franks snorts.   
“Ah fuck off, it’s fine.”

Without thinking, Matthias holds his cigarette between his lips and steps in front of him to hold the zipper of his bomber jacket, clearly not thick enough for the season. 

“If you just closed your coat though, you child.”

As he zips up the jacket, he suddenly realises the proximity and almost sweetness of the gesture. For a mere couple of seconds, he freezes in place as they stare at each other. 

Frank breaks the spell with a strange tone in his voice.

“Right. I’ll ask Rivette if he’s got a spare turtleneck or something.”

Max wriggles about, avoiding to meet his eyes as Frank makes his way inside before he can hear him mutter:

“He’s got about thirty-seven.”

And just like that, for the first time in months, it’s just the two of them.

It hits Matt then: they haven’t been alone since that time at Shariff’s. After that, he’d been avoiding him until he showed up on his doorstep right before they left for the airport with Frank - so even then, it was different. There wasn’t time for a conversation or proper goodbyes or closure on everything that had happened. Yet he’s missed this, he who’d grown entitled to this sort of special relationship with Maxime and an exclusive part of his time. 

“I shouldn’t ask you how you’re doing, should I?”   
“You can, but you already know.”   
“Hm.”   
  
It is strange to have him here in person again, and Matthias doesn’t dare to stare despite desperately wanting to. It doesn’t feel like he’s allowed to do so.

“Frank gave me some of your things, I assume winter stuff you didn’t take with you? You should come around and pick them up.”

Max gives a faint smile, his right arm wrapped around his middle as if to warm up himself. 

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

___

The next following days are filled up with more of the same thing and Max’s anxiety visibly grows in proportion. He paces around the Rivette’s house, does a lot of staring into the distance and bites his thumb to a pulp as he’s known to do. Matthias can see how he hates himself for letting these feelings make the most of him, as if half a year away from his mother and her pernicious control should have made him stronger by now. He does try to brush it off but it’s no use around the gang.

Although they do have some light conversations about Australia, they do little more than mentioning his new job or a series of local cliches and other banter. Nothing about new friends, dates, or else. No “Aubrey” or no “Tom”. Matthias is torn between being relieved and wanting to know all about it, wishing someone would break out the subject for him, but it never happens. Maxime’s love life is like Schrödinger’s cat in an unopened box.

Matt takes a week of work and Max seems genuinely surprised when he learns it. His reaction and their mates’ reaction hurts him a bit. 

“You didn’t have to, Rivette is here all the time and Brass said-”   
“It’s ok. I needed to take these days off anyway.” it’s not exactly a lie, he’s been working like a dog for months. And to be honest, he can’t imagine himself sitting at work, distracted by Max’s presence elsewhere.   
“Thanks, Matt. That means a lot.” 

As if on cue, he goes back to the living-room as Shariff calls for him, leaving Matt alone in the kitchen with Frank - once again. He opens the fridge, not even looking for anything but eager to avoid his judgemental stare. No such chance. 

“I’m not gonna go out there and pretend that I know what’s going on between you two-”   
“Don’t do that.” Matthias tries not to snap - and fails.

The both of them often bump heads, they always had. When they turned twenty, Frank admitted half-jokingly that he couldn’t stand his ass for a whole year when after they met - through Max, like most of them did. They were too similar not to be at odds with each other. 

But unlike Matt, Frank notices things - and unlike Rivette who goes out of his way to create situations, he seems to naturally get in the way of them. Recently, he’s had a knack for finding himself in between Matthias and Maxime ; it led among other things to a somewhat awkward ride to the airport back in the summer that none of them had forgotten, clearly.

He clicks his tongue. It is clear that they are both trying not to lock horns with each other, because of all the love they have for (and hide from) each other and on behalf of Maxime who does not understand their relationship, most of the time. It is interesting and entirely unsurprising that they would naturally gravitate towards someone like him, who’s always been more of a peacemaker. 

“I won’t. But Max is in a shit place right now, and he needs a friend, or else, but for fuck sake dude, don’t confuse him.”   
“I’m not- We’re adults here, Frank.” Matt starts but stops himself before getting too worked up. He takes a steady breath. “There’s nothing there.”    
“Cool. If you say so.” 

Frank’s tone isn’t ironic but doesn’t sound entirely convinced either. He slaps him lightly on the shoulder as he leaves the room. 

The truth is, there  _ is  _ something there, despite the fact that it does not quite have a name. Matt knows he’s dancing around Maxime with an obvious uneasiness. Looking at him surrounded by their friends, he doesn’t look any different than he was months ago, before he made his confession. Being gay - or bisexual, or anything else - didn’t change a thing about his kindness and nervousness and dedication. Everybody acted around him the same way they always did, often more tactile with him than they were with each other ; the last thing he wanted was for their friends to get the wrong idea and think he was pushing Max away because of it. 

Yet he can’t help himself: since he’s landed, Matthias has been  _ aware  _ of Maxime in a steadily building way. Every time he leaves or enters a room, every time they touch when he hands him a cup of coffee or when their knees align on the couch. Most of the time, he jerks away from it, ignoring the way it might hurt him.

When it gets late, Matt stretches one final time and retrieves his jacket and car keys, leaving Max behind at the Rivettes. Before he does, the latter gives his arm a squeeze and he forces himself to smile back. Maxime not being straight didn’t change a thing about him, but perhaps it did change something about them. Not that it mattered anymore. 

When Matt gets in his car, he doesn’t immediately start the engine, both of his hands steady on the wheel. Six months ago he’d been quick to write off what had happened between them and Max had moved on, albeit not in the way he’d expected or wanted him to. Now that he’d made his bed, he just had to lie in it.

___ 

It’s Thursday when they finally find Manon. Just like they suggested, she’d rekindled some old fucked up relationship, which just ended as well as you’d expect - meaning with her getting arrested for causing a commotion outside a deli somewhere in the outskirts of Ottawa. Aunt Ginette is the one to get called as her tutor, her details probably listed in some sort of register. There’s little chance that Manon ever gave that number from her own volition.

Surprisingly, she drives there without Max, who only accepts to go meet with some social workers when she is back on Friday. Maxime, with his limited sense of emotional preservation, always tends to go right back to her, as if he’d learned nothing in nearly thirty years of berating and mistreatment. He’d always been too quick to forgive - his mother, his best friend and everybody else. 

Frank is right: he does deserve better. A better family and a better friend, nothing like what he’d been for the longest time.

When he comes around knocking on Matt’s door on Friday evening, he looks worse for wear despite the pristine, cream knitted jumper he’s dressed with. It’s most definitely Rivette’s. Traces of early snowflakes linger in his hair. Matt wants to reach out and shake them but he overthinks each one of their boundaries now, like they just met. He lets him inside.

“How did it go?”   
  
Max opens his mouth to answer but nothing comes for a while. He hangs his coat in the hallway and makes his way in, rubbing his palms together.

“Not sure exactly.”   
“Are you hungry ? I could go out grab some food?” He’d been laying idle all day, merely checking some work emails.   
“Don’t bother. I could use a drink though.”   
“Is red ok?”

He reaches out for one of the bottles neatly stacked in a corner and looks for the opener as Maxime leans against the counter, blowing on his freezing fingers. The desire to warm them up against his own crosses his mind before he pushes it away once more ; he couldn’t pinpoint the exact moments these thoughts had become so recurrent, almost obsessive at this point. 

He is terrified to give into them too, not exactly sure what would arise from it, just like kissing his knuckles did that one night. 

It takes Maxime an entire drink to start speaking about his day.

“I think she might be…” he hesitates about his choice of words, like he isn’t sure they’re the right ones or if he’s allowed to say them “Bipolar. You know. Something like that.”   
“Yeah?”   
“Hm-hm.” he answers, almost too casually. “So I think they’re going to run a few tests. See what’s of it, if she needs special care or something.”

It isn’t exactly the first time that this potential trouble is brought to the table. Manon has gone through her fair share of assessments and was dismissed of all of them, mostly with the help of her sons who didn’t want to be sent away. At the end of the day, it was always more convenient to blame it on the booze and the drugs.    
  
“Would that change the guardianship?”   
“I don’t know, maybe? Probably?”   
“Would you still go back to Melbourne then?”

Now would be the perfect time to admit what he’s been keeping for himself this whole time, from the moment his friend took the decision to leave. He doesn’t want Max gone. Everybody is aware of it, from Sarah who wanted him so badly to make things right by him to his mother who thinks he's unbearable without his side-kick or their friends who look at him almost with pity. Everybody knows but Maxime, it seems, because Matthias never admitted it.  


Maxime, for all the talent and experience he’s had deciphering his best friend’s mood, doesn’t seem to know how much he needs him. He wallows in his own complexes, probably so sure that Matthias will do well whatever happens, with or without him, because he doesn’t have any reason to think otherwise. Everybody had always expected great things from him - hot shot lawyer, trustworthy kid, someone you'd bring to your parents.  


Even now, he couldn’t get out the single word that could have fixed this whole situation. He couldn’t ask him to stay. 

He can almost hear the disappointment in Max’s voice when he says:

“Sure. If my flight doesn’t get cancelled with the weather.”

When they were children, there was little more they’d enjoy as much as a snow day. When these were big enough, schools would close down and they would spend hours getting frost bites out in the garden and making pudding with Francine inside. They’d use this as an excuse not to drive back Max to his mother - not that she’d be too fussed about his absence anyway. When the weather raged on again they stayed in, gazes fixated on the window.  _ What if it never stops and I get to stay here _ Max had said, once, when he was ten. 

Now, Matthias catches himself wishing for a storm too, something that would stop time altogether, fixating the two of them in that very moment, far from simple but content. 

___

Later on when Max finally admits to not having touched any sort of food apart from a Mars bar in forty-eight hours, Matt gets in his car to grab some takeaway. He steps into that dumplings place he knows Max enjoys secretly - since he’s never allowed himself to treat himself to some - and orders about every other item on the menu. As he waits, he doesn’t notice someone slipping by.

“Matt?” 

That voice takes him aback at first. He hasn’t heard it in months now. 

“Sarah.”

She stands here, cheeks pink from the cold. She wears her hair down underneath the massive knot of her scarf, which isn’t quite like her.

With not much of an hesitation, they go in for a brief hug. Matt realises that he has pretty much forgotten her smell ; none of it was left in the flat these days. She pulls away maybe a second too early and they try to pretend that it isn’t strange for them to stand awkwardly amongst hipsters waiting for their hoisin duck after not having seen each other for months.

Yet her gaze feels comfortable, and they smile. 

“You look well.” she says.

So does she, but she always did. 

“You too. What are you…” he waves vaguely at the place, which is quite far from her neighbourhood. He wonders if she’s still staying with her sister.    
“Just dropping by Anouk’s. She likes this place too.”   
“Ah, right, she lives around doesn’t she?”   
Sarah nods and asks “What about you?” 

For some reason, Matt can’t bring himself to tell her that Maxime is here, although she’d be glad to hear about him. Maybe this is a lot to get into at the moment. He’s glad that his order seems way too sizeable to even be for two people. 

“Just seeing the guys.” 

Her smile actually gets a bit wider.

“I’m glad that you’re spending time together.”

She doesn’t add:  _ unlike what you promised me _ . But that’s only fair, she never asked him to do any kind of concession - or at least, none of the sort. For a while though, he’d been content to use her as an excuse to put distance between himself and the things he did not dare to face. 

And now here he is. 

They exchange a few trivialities -  _ How’s your mom? You look good -  _ and eventually he gets called out to pick up his order. Just like Max did just a few days before, she squeezes his arm as he grabs the bags on his way out. It feels miles away from what he went through when she left him that night.

“I guess I’ll see you around? Give the guys my love alright?”

Workers behind the counter are pressing her to get her order in, forcing them to rush an uncomfortable goodbye. He wishes there was more time for them than this, although they’d had all the time in the world and he hadn’t managed to talk to her then, to make them work. As he’s making his way through the door, he holds it back with his foot almost automatically, without thinking, earning himself some impatient huffs from the other queueing customers.

“Sarah-” 

She turns around.   
  
“Could we get a drink? Or coffee. Whenever. Just, you know, to talk.”   
“That would be nice.” she says, simply “Text me, then?”

With a nod and a promise, he’s out of the door.

___

When he gets back, Maxime is fast asleep on the couch. 

Matt can’t imagine him having had more than a handful of hours of sleeping here and there since he landed. He’d always let things get to him almost to a physical point. With a sigh, grabs any box from the bag he just brought and eats in silence. Then he picks up his phone to text Rivette -  _ Max crashed, don’t expect him  _ \- and lays a plaid over his friend. After that, he catches up on some work, unenthusiastically watches a few videos he can’t get into and calls it a night.

___

In his own room, Matt keeps drifting in and out of sleep. He once again rolls around in his bed, gnawed by restlessness and frustration. After some fruitless attempts, he reaches out for his phone with a groan, squinting at the time on his screen: 4:02AM. 

Tired and exasperated, he can’t stop thinking about Maxime sleeping in his living-room. In the morning, before he can even fathom to have a real conversation at all, they’d have to go back to their friends and in two days, he would be gone. In two days, he would get the remaining parts of him hiding under Matthias’ bed ; Matt would get into his suit again and to work again. He would text Sarah like he said he would, and he’d do what it took to get her back. Then in two years, Maxime would come back to Montreal - or maybe he wouldn’t. 

Just like so often for the past six months, his mind wanders back to their last kiss. He’s done trying to suppress the memory and the feelings with it yet he still can’t make sense of that inescapable desire he’d felt then. He wishes he could have felt even some of it when he’d seen Sarah again, whom he’d loved for so long then ; if he tried, maybe he could once again, but everything is misplaced, confused. Instead, he finds himself wishing for someone he’s known since age seven to come knock on his door in the middle of the night.

What would he have done then? Pretend to sleep or cross some final line, some point of no return? 

When his strange, shameful fantasy doesn’t come true, he stands up, puts on a t-shirt and crosses the living-room silently, careful not to wake the immobile form on his couch. 

He doesn’t turn on the light before pouring himself a pint of water. His image reflects itself in the window, almost turned into a mirror by the pitch dark night outside. He’s not surprised when just a minute later, Max’s image appears on the surface.

He’s still fully dressed from having fallen asleep unexpectedly and so early into the night - probably fighting a jet-lag as well. Matt doesn’t say anything, does not turn around, and he stays in the doorway like he’s debating whether or not to come closer. Matt wants to give him the choice, for once. 

Maxime approaches slowly and excruciatingly, until Matthias can’t even see him behind him. And in the softest way anyone has ever been to him, he presses his cheek in the space between his shoulder blades. His arms wrap around his middle, tentative. The embrace is almost brotherly, but not quite. 

Matt lets out an exhale, as if he’d been building up pressure until this very moment. He rubs his thumb against the back of Max’s hand. 

They’d kiss once, young and curious. And then once more but it didn’t count - except it did. And another unforgivable time, drunk and repressed. Matt always had a way out, an excuse, and Max was always patient for him to realise the truth about them ; it had nearly been too late. 

When he turns around and his hands cradle his neck, Maxime holds onto his wrists.

He never goes back to the couch. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick few notes on this!
> 
> I am aware that I am just conventiently grazing over what's quite a heavy subject when bringing in Manon but I'm also conscious that if I got into more details, this piece would just never end. There will be more about this in a separate epilogue but bear with me thank you.  
> I know this is also painfully lacking of friendly banter but hey, we'll get there. Boys be having issues.
> 
> Thank you so, so much for the kudos and kind comments. I'm always unsure whether or not I should answer them all because I feel like I'm cheating with the numbers then but I appreciate them all!


	5. Qu'on se parle d'amour ou d'amitié

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just like Maxime requested, they do get to spend the weekend together - albeit months too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, finally edited this whole thing out.  
> Couldn't resist slipping in some Céline Dion in the chapter and the title, since I am now wondering if this movie wasn't just based on the 1982 hit "d'amour ou d'amitié" - if you do check out translations for the lyrics, don't trust the "get rid of him" part.
> 
> A lot of Rhye was listening in the making of this chapter. See you at the end for more relevant notes.

In the end, they do get their weekend together. 

Snow falls out there, in the pitch dark night, unnoticed from inside the flat. Condensation blurring out the window. They lay tangled in a way that Matthias has never known after sleeping with someone for the first time. He rests against Max, his naked back cooling down against his friend’s torso, tired head against his collarbone. Max’s legs frame either side of his body, his knees bony and scraped - who scraps their knees at twenty-nine? 

Matt feels tethered, present at last.

Fingers comb through his curls, inky with cooling sweat. The embrace is painfully intimate. After what seems to be so long, they finally talk - or at least Max does, mostly.

Maxime speaks like someone who’s been interrupted his whole life - or not listened at all. Sometimes, after a longer sentence, he’ll unconsciously lose his ways, like he isn’t used to even getting that far. He stumbles on words or looks for them. Matthias just feels too dazed to be his usual self and find them for him.

“I hate my job. In Melbourne. It’s crap.”   
“I get that.” That’s about all he can manage at the moment.   
“My manager is twenty-two. Like - what the fuck am I doing there?”

Laid bare against his chest, Matt can feel the sigh escaping his lungs. His fingers meet a mark on the softer part of Max’s calf. He remembers how he got that scar, he was there. A bike ride gone wrong when they were children, on their way back from a soccer game with some kids. Maxime had tried to downplay his wound before they went home and Francine gave Matt hell for not noticing sooner.

She’d done his stitches herself and Max had tried his best to act tough and contain his tears but he’d clutched his hand so hard in his. Matt never looked away and by the end of it, he was crying too. His mother kissed his head, and told him that things were ok now and would always be if they took care of each other, because that’s what you do when you cherish someone ; you noticed the tears they held in. 

“I don’t know, I thought things would be different you know.”   
“How so?”   
“I did all this, starting over, in a new place. I thought it’d  _ have  _ to pay off. I could meet new people, be happy.”

_ You’ve known some of your closest friends for twenty years,  _ Matt thinks but doesn’t say.  _ Of course making new ones in your late twenties just isn’t the same - fuck, it might never be again.  _ And if it’s friends that Max wants, he’s got plenty to go around in Montreal, so why leave all this behind?

But Matt knows why, more than anyone else. He knows about the weight of his mother over his existence, how he needed to put as much distance as he possibly could to feel like he could even start to free himself from it. So he doesn’t say any of that, just like he doesn’t share any of the pain he feels hearing his life-long better half longing for a new life he’s not a part of.

“You’re twenty-nine. Making friends doesn’t get easier. I wouldn’t be friends with anybody at work either.”   
“I don’t know, I guess Rivette did it and I thought, so can I.”   
“ _ Rivette  _ was sent to fucking Cambridge to be surrounded by people just like him, other turtleneck-wearing clones who talk psychology. It’s not the same damn thing Max, you know that.” 

Max’s laugh vibrates all the way through him, but it sounds bitter. 

“Where are the people like me then?”

_ They’re here _ , Matt’s heart immediately jumps in, but it’s not exactly right:  _ There isn’t anyone else quite like you _ is the full truth, but he doesn’t dare to say it because it’s singlehandedly the worst and most beautiful thing sensitive people can hear. Instead, he faintly presses his fingers against the scar and hopes that he understands it anyway.

___

They eat leftover dumplings in the late morning and sit on the couch, legs tangled together. Food is abandoned on the coffee-table as they light cigarettes for dessert. It’s too cold to smoke by the window. Despite being their various states of undress, this feels more like them than it has in months. There’s no more pent-up anger and frustration, everything is laid bare just like they are. 

Max’s ankle lays against Matt’s side. His shoulders show the faint tan line of his t-shirt. It doesn't look like he's been spending much time lounging on the beach without it.

Every inch of skin is covered in art, wounds, bruises, freckles and moles. When he was too young for tattoos, his hands would always be stained with dirt and colourful pen marks from the hours he could spend drawing fantasies. And then up on his beautiful face, the most important mark of them all. The one that said it all. His whole body is covered in stories but this one is the most meaningful one. 

Being confronted with this utmost desire for someone combined with childhood memories continues to give him whiplash - at least for now. Any psychiatrist would have a field trip.

Max phone pings. This is the first time in a long time that they’re reminded of the outside world.

“Who’s that?” Matt asks as he blows some smoke.   
Max just shakes his head faintly. “It’s nothing.” 

He puts his phone away but his expression has changed, ever-so-slightly. Matt pulls on his cigarette.

“Someone from back there?” he doesn’t say _ back home _ .    
Max scratches his cheek. “Yeah, actually.”    
  
He doesn’t elaborate on the matter, the look on his face reminiscent of the one he bore on the frozen screen of their New Year call. 

“Someone important?”   
“What do you mean?” He asks and Matt doesn’t know if he wants him to spell it out or if he’s actually being genuine.    
“What was it, Tom?” Matt says with the best detached tone he can muster, which might have worked on just about anybody else. 

In front of him, Maxime’s face goes through several expressions. Disbelief, at first, then a hint of confusion, followed by realisation and what looks like a mix between offense and honest amusement as looks away to crush his cigarette butt in the ashtray. 

“We went out maybe, twice? That was months ago.”    
  
Relief somehow washes over him, quickly followed by embarrassment for even reaching the subject after firmly avoiding it for months. He doesn’t even dare to ask if there’s been another guy, or girl, or anything in-between. After all, what would it even change to this situation they’re in? Surely this should have been the sort of thing to enquire about before getting into bed with him, which hadn’t even crossed his mind. 

“I didn’t know that.”    
“Fuck, Matt you- we spoke for ages, you could have asked.”   
“You didn’t tell me about it either.” he protests.    
“Because we- You know why.” 

Matthias wants to know, but he’s not ready to hear it yet. Instead he pulls on Max’s ankle, bringing him easily towards him, and grabs the back of his neck for a kiss. Maxime allows it, letting out a frustrated and infatuated sigh against his mouth. 

There would be time to talk about how this, and how he missed him, and how nothing makes sense anymore (except there’s not).

They fall into each other again and again with ease - not without surprise at first, but with a unambiguous intensity. No questions asked. After so much turmoil, Matthias finally finds some release in some mindless pleasure and affection. 

Maxime rarely ever initiates any of it and Matt wishes he could be more selfish, for once. He lets him touch his face in the small hours of the night, eyes closed, barely awake ; he senses Max’s fingers against his cheekbone, his temple, wondering where they’ll go next. He feels like a new person, while still remaining undeniably  _ Maxime.  _

For twenty-four hours they explore, sometimes tease ( _ “do you really not have a single condom?” “listen, it hasn’t exactly been the love shack around here” _ ) and maybe even understand each other for a moment. For twenty-four hours, things fall into place and they find each other again in a whole new way.   
___

On Sunday morning, Maxime is in bed, wearing one of his t-shirts and scrolling on his phone casually. There is a comfortable silence that one can only get with someone you’ve known for so long. One of his legs is sticking out of the blanket and Matthias can’t quite process how stirred up he can feel about an exposed thigh. 

In his hands, his phone pings alongside Matt's own somewhere in the room: this can only mean it’s a notification from the group chat. Matthias falls over on the bed close to him, sticking a hand under his shirt, feeling the skin there. Under his palm, Max doesn’t flinch, warm and pliant.

“The guys?”   
“Yeah, they’re wondering if everything is ok. We’re all supposed to hang out today.” 

Outside it stopped snowing long ago, so there’s no using that as an excuse. Soon they would have to leave this room and the microcosm it contains, put on some clothes and go on with their lives; the idea of even slipping into a suit on Monday seems completely alien to him. Reality is all too jaring. 

“Come on.” Max says, like he can read his thoughts. “Rivette wants to cook a roast.”   
“Ah fuck Britain, they’re turning him into Mary Berry.”   
“I’ve tried to google what a trifle is. I’m still not sure.” 

He turns his phone towards Matt’s face, displaying an entire grid of what could barely qualify as a recipe. The whole situation is both surreal and weirdly domestic. He’s not sure he wants to trade in the comfort of this bed for cold weather and dubious dessert ; he doesn’t feel like sharing Max just yet. He also hasn’t had time to process what just happened, let alone how others would fall in equation to the both of them. 

“Hard pass.” 

Of course Maxime is looking forward to spending some time with all of them before going back to Melbourne. That’s something else Matthias would rather not think about or discuss. When Max sits on the side of the bed, Matt brushes idly his fingers against his lower back, as fascinated by the gesture itself as the skin underneath.

“I’ll get in the shower.” 

He goes alone this time, having already promised they would be around by noon.

As they get dressed, Matthias looks for the right moment, just a fleeting opportunity to kiss him again, but it nevers happens. Max packs up an old sports bag of his with most of the content of the box that’s been sitting under his bed for months. They wash up any trace of the weekend of their skin and hair and mouth, not to look suspicious, doing almost too good of a job. Looking at them, it’s almost like nothing happened. 

In the hallway, they put on their shoes, facing each other in silence. When they stand up to open the door, they freeze for a moment, holding each other’s gaze. 

Now would be the time to hold him, push him against the door and get the kiss he’s been thinking about. He knows he should say something, anything, something meaningful or at least true, yet nothing comes out. He’s done so much to him and yet holding his hand now seems impossible. 

With a stiff smile, they leave the flat behind. 

___

“Yo Matt, I heard that you saw Sarah again?”

He nearly cuts his finger off while chopping some vegetables. Brass is leaning against the table, unproductive, nursing a glass of red wine they’re supposed to use for cooking in a tumbler glass. It takes Matthias a few seconds to understand how he even knows about this.

“How do you-” then it hits him. “Jesus, I forgot that you and Anouk had that weird fuck-buddy thing going on.” 

The fact that one of Sarah’s best friends would casually sleep with _Brass_ on the regular, of all people, still astounds him.

“Damn right.”    
“Is that right, Matt?” Frank asks “Did you two meet up?”   
He grimaces. “Eh… No. We just ran into each other. That’s it.”

Shariff comes closer and steals one of the carrots Matt’s been cutting, earning himself a disapproving click of the tongue

“Are you guys gonna give it another go?”

Matt sighs, focused on his task. He drops the cut vegetables in a colander in the sink, turning the faucet on to rinse them through. As he does, he notices Max and Rivette in the garden. They seem to be having a rather meaningful conversation ; Maxime is looking at his feet as Rivette gently tries to catch his gaze. 

Obviously, none of them has said a word about the events of the weekend to anybody. Although his heart jumps at the thought, it doesn’t look like it’s the subject of conversation between them. 

“Ah, I don’t know. I’m not sure we will, actually.”   
“That’s a shame, she was cool.” Brass says before Frank elbows him “What?”

Matt isn’t exactly sure why he does so or why he then tries to change the subject, but he’s grateful that he does.

“Still can’t believe you and Anouk are still a thing though. It’s just science-fiction to me.”   
“Talking about science-fiction, do you keep the Rick and Morty socks when you do it?” Shariff adds.   
“Fuck off, does yours read your tarot cards?”

As it happens, Shariff’s girlfriend, the polish neuroscientist PhD, is also big into mystical stuff, astronomy, weird rocks, and she and Matthias have yet to go through a normal conversation that doesn’t give him a literal shock from culture clash.    
  
“Your willful ignorance can’t get in the way of our love.”   
“Oh, already using the big L word here, man?”   
“Of course I am. If you don’t say ‘I love you’ to your girl after five months, what do you even tell her?”   
  
It’s not Shariff’s first time being in love, but everytime he believes it with the same intensity. It is rather endearing. He is of those who love being in love - and there’s always been plenty of candidates for the role to choose from. He is getting close to his thirties though now, one of them will have to be  _ the one _ soon. They’ve always bet that he’d be the first to get hitched.    
  
“Alright, how do you even know then?” Brass asks, pointing a carrot at him. Matt wishes they’d stop eating his handiwork.    
“I don’t know, you just  _ do _ , right? It’s the little things. ”

Matt’s eyes dart to the kitchen window once more. Outside, Maxime and Rivette wrap their arms around each other, and Rivette pats his back a couple times.

“Like… I want her to put her hand on my knee when I’m driving.” 

Brass looks in the distance for a second and Matt wonders if he’s genuinely confused by the statement or if he’s looking back on certain moments he spent with this girl in a new light. They tease each other some more and things get loud rather quickly - nothing unusual. Cutting into the conversation, Rivette makes an entrance in the kitchen, clapping his hands together, cheeks pink from the nipping cold. 

“Alright less chit-chat, more cooking around here!” 

Maxime doesn’t follow at first and Matt takes the opportunity to ask about their conversation in the garden, eyes fixed on the cutting board. He tries to sound casual. 

“Everything good?”    
“I assume you don’t mean me, but thank you for asking.” Rivette retorts. “He’s alright. Anxious about leaving. I don’t think he’s having a really grand time back there.”    
“Did he say that?”

Rivette leans against the counter. 

“Don’t say I snitched. Ah, don’t cut the onions so-” He snaps and grabs the knife from him. “I think he also lost his job coming here.”

Suddenly, the picture of Max checking his phone with worry springs up in his mind as he makes the connexion, always a second too late.    
  
“Jesus then why - I don’t get it. Why does he want to go so bad?”   
“Because, Matt, this is the first thing he’s ever done for himself.” he answers, pointedly, almost in rhythm with his slicing. “But you get that, right?”

Yet sometimes, even the boldest of moves didn’t guarantee happiness. The acidic flavour from the onions is already burning his eyes and he grunts, rubbing the knuckles of his thumbs against them. 

“He’s got people who love him here though.”

He doesn’t say  _ he’s got me, loving him here _ , but he does, as well as Francine, and Martine, his friend Lisa who Matthias isn’t fond of, and each one of the boys who just isn’t exactly the same since he’s left. Some people looked for this kind of love all their lives, some didn’t even get to know it at all. Why run from it?

Rivette looks at him with a smile that’s halfway between fondness and amusement. 

“Have you told him that?”    
“He knows it.”   
“Does he now?”

And Matthias just thinks: he does, he has to.

__

They’d grown in a tight pack, a found family of sort that others envied today. As teenagers, they didn’t know yet how precious this would be, piled in Brass’ basement smoking the day away. They were self-absorbed and carefree. Growing up from then had been amazing. It wasn’t to be said that all of it was easy, because your early twenties aren’t always: they’d had their fair share of hardships, including Maxime who’d had the most of them. He was always pressured to grow before everybody else.

But it had been brilliant, all of it, a whole damn adventure. They’d lived in the same lame flats that all guys had before they settled in couples, so plain and masculine, not a rug in sight. They got down the streets of Montreal on various days of the week, barely ever tired, recovering from hangovers in nothing flat ; they once were the freshers drinking cheap beers and rolling cigarettes that Matt saw on his way back from work. They wanted less of life then, just high on each other and the happiness of having a genuine fucking connexion. Girls - and boys, in Rivette’s case - had come and gone.

When Matthias was younger, he used to think that their thirties would look like something different than what it is now ; that they would have things “figured out now”. Instead, they seemed comfortably stuck in between two ages. They had rugs and girlfriends and more substantial hangovers. They dropped edibles on Saturday to make it on time for the Farmers’ market on Sunday. 

Sometimes, Matt wonders who he would be if he hadn’t evolved in close proximity to this perfect, unperfect bunch of men. Perhaps he would be more of the prick he both wanted and feared to become. A few months ago, he’d tried to push them away thinking it was time for him to grow and settle.

What if this whole ordeal with Max was just his own foolish way to hold onto something he wasn’t quite ready to let go? 

Matthias looks at him as he sits on the other side of the table, laughing in his glass at the conversation. He feels somewhat possessive of him ; everybody loved Max, but only he knew him wholly, inside and out. He almost takes pride in the fact.

“I let you in my house! I welcome you and this is how you repay me?” Rivette exclaims.   
“I said what I said!”   
“That’s the fucking problem!” he says, overtly outraged “With your problematic Celine Dion opinions.”

He and Frank are way too invested in trying to determine which of her albums is the best, completely replenished by diner and wine and ready to fight for it. Considering how they both feel about it, plates might start flying soon and Matt would rather not be in the way of the fire when it happens. 

He picks up some dirty dishes and takes them back to the kitchen, dropping them in the sink to wash some. As he lingers there, music is already starting to resonate from the dining-room amidst the pointed arguments. Soon, Maxime is on his steps. Without a word, he picks up a plate that Matthias hands him and dries it with a cloth, just like they did back in the summer, right before everything went flying.

“All ready for tomorrow? Did you check in?”   
  
He just nods back with a faint smile and they fall back into silence, save for Celine Dion’s 1982 album which starts playing in the background. Thus begins the most surreal moment of Matthias’ life, where he washes the dishes with a man he’s just spent life-changing forty eight hours with, as the lyrics from Quebec’s national treasure narrate the conundrum he’s going through. 

The desire they have for each other is a peculiar one. 

For the longest time, it was a dormant one, comfortable, lying under the surface on which their whole friendship balanced itself - underneath the very foundation of their relationship. They had no need to address it.

It had been easy to ignore it for so long, too. Matt had let himself get too close to it once or twice, felt how easy he could burn from it, and he’d try to run away - swimming away from it in the cold water of the lake, running away at night. Now that he’d given in, would they ever be the same? What would be left from the fire? 

Because Matthias looks at Maxime and he still wants him. He’s always had in his own way. Rivette was right: he’d got used to being the main guy in his life. He’d always wanted his time, and affection, and an exclusive form of attention - always within the limits of what he, a straight guy, could apprehend. Always within his own rules. That’s why it hurt so badly, threw him off his tracks, when Max decided to leave ; it had felt worse than any break up, because it was a rejection. He’d never been enough to hold him back. 

Just like goddamn Celine Dion, he hadn’t learned to live without him.

  
  


One by one and late into the night they eventually leave, leaving Max with teary-eyed embraces, holiday plans and purposefully sloppy kisses until there’s only Matthias left. Once again, Max is staying at the Rivette’s in the guest bedroom he’s occupied since he landed. 

When reaching out the subject of his flight in the morning, Rivette seems to suddenly remember a Skype call with his dissertation tutor that he cannot miss under any circumstance and asks if Matt will drive him. He and Max look at each other, somewhat confused but don’t protest, nor do they mention the rather slim time difference between Cambridge and Montreal. Matt was always going to accompany them anyway.

“You sure you don’t want to crash here?” Rivette offers.   
“I can’t, I’ve got to pick up my suit, I’m going straight to work afterwards.”    
“Alright, Ally Mcbeal.” 

He doesn’t offer Max to come stay at his, because it would look dubious. The latter simply looks at him with an expectant look, shifting on his feet. Matthias wonders if the way they almost magnetically face each other is apparent - or if trying to avoid it would be even worse. The three of them hug, and he makes his way to his car with not much of a word.

Back home, he makes a beeline for his bedroom but his unwashed sheets unmistakably smell of Maxime and sex and he can’t quite go to bed yet.

Feeling the need to chase up the feeling of wine from diner, he gets himself a beer from the fridge and lays down on his couch, phone in hand, browsing through his conversations and contacts. Max shows to be online. 

He looks at his handle for a while, considering writing a text but no word comes to him. 

After a sigh and a complete disregard for the time, he dials the contact he used to call so often. It takes a few rings before getting through. 

“I was wondering if you’d call.”

Sarah’s voice sounds comforting already, and Matt doesn’t try to hold back his smile.

“Sorry, it’s late, I can call back another time-”   
“Don’t worry, it’s ok. How are you?”   
  
At first he lies, going for the easy answer, and pretends that things are good, uncomplicated. They strike up a conversation just as shallow as the initial one in that takeaway restaurant was, except this time, both of them seem to know what this call is about. Yet Matthias isn’t quite ready still. He wishes he could stall things a little bit longer - but what would be the point of it?   
  
“You were right, in the end. To break up.”

And from her silence, all seems clear now: she isn’t coming back. Yet Matthias can almost feel her smiling on the other end of the line. He’s only realising now but he wonders if she’s known from the beginning, from the moment she’d given him that hug and smiled through it. 

The thought of this morning flight and life itself going back to this new normal on his own, this routine he hates, makes him anxious.

“It’s just that-” his voice cracks up ever-so-slightly, and he shoves his palm against his mouth before finishing “I’m not sure I can do this alone.”   
“Matt, no one's asking you to. No one ever did.” she says, soft against his ear “That’s what I meant in the car, on the way to Shariff’s.”

He almost blurts out the truth.

“I kissed Max that night. I should have told you then.”   
  
It’s a relief to finally be telling someone, anyone. 

Sarah doesn’t say anything at first and he’s afraid she might hang up now, she’d have every right to, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t yell either or asks if he’s gay either ; instead, she sounds calm and Matthias can imagine her playing with her earring like she’d do when she thought of what to say next.

“You should have.” she agrees. “But I suspected so, I just didn’t want to confront you. I wanted you to open up to me. I always did.”   
“How did you know?”   
“I didn’t, not per say, but there were… hints.”   
“That night?”   
“Always.”

Part of him wants to know what they were but this would probably be a lot to unpack for the moment. He’s not quite ready to look back in time and guess how long he’s been harbouring feelings for Maxime. 

“I’m sorry I fucked us up.” Matt says “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you.”   
“We can always do that. I’d like it if we did.”  _ Just not the way we could have _ , she doesn’t add, but Matt knows.    
“We can. We should.” 

He asks about her own life and they talk some more into the night as he falls back into pleasant silence, nodding here and there. It’s almost shameful how much it took out of him to emotionally open for a handful of minutes. 

By the end of their conversation, she asks him:

“I heard Max is back?” Of course she does, their circles of friends always somewhat meeting.   
“No he’s just… He’s leaving tomorrow.”   
“Oh.” she pauses. “I’ll always be here for you Matt, I mean it. But maybe I’m not the one you need to talk to.”

___

In the car, Max is avoiding his gaze. Eyes fixed on his window, his leg shakes and he bites his fingers once more. Matt doesn’t have the heart to tell him to stop nor to ask him to look in his direction ; he can feel that it would be too much for him. He can see the tears hinting at the corners of his eyes, just like Francine had taught him to. 

The drive is silent, despite all the things that are still left unsaid between us - perhaps  _ because  _ there’s still so much weighting on them. Matt doesn’t dare to put on the radio to distract themselves because as much as he can’t articulate what is going on, he believes he does have to at least feel all of it. 

Because as much as he wants to stop the car on the side of the road to kiss him senseless, things don’t make more sense now than they did ten days ago. As much as he wants things to be this easy, Matthias still spent thirty years of his life living a certain way, believing that he knew who he was, only to doubt all of it in a matter of days. 

He needs time, way more than the thirteen minutes left to Pierre-Elliott Trudeau the GPS assures him he has. 

Matt sighs and reaches out for Max while keeping an eye on the road, his fingers squeezing the back of his neck almost too hard ; he can sense the tension there. He feels useless and somewhat ashamed that he can’t do more.  _ I wish we could sort this mess out,  _ he wants to say, but can’t fathom it. Twenty-four hours ago, the Matthias from that reality where only the two of them existed would have been bold. He would have made a u-turn and damned any consequence. 

But the Matthias and Maxime from this reality, the ones contained within this car, they knew better. 

As he takes a turn, Matt can’t stop himself to think about what would happen next. In a day, and a week, and a year. Maybe they’d get over it. Maybe they’d grow with this secret in, something that only belonged with each other, a secret understanding, a yearning acknowledged but barely acted upon. Almost something they’d dreamed of. If Max came back, maybe they’d slip a few times or never mention it again. And then what? Would Matt go back to his life, perhaps one day get married and think about the way his best man once ran his hand through his hair during a snowstorm? 

Could he? 

Did you ever come back from something like this? 

There was a chance he’d never feel an intimacy like they’d had ever again. Something so guttural and craving but quiet too. As he looks at him on the passenger seat, Matthias can’t find a word to describe what they are - or what he feels. He has nothing to compare it to.

He just wants Maxime to put his hand on his knee when he’s driving.

When they get to the airport drop-off, Matt parks on the side, pulls the handbrake and even takes out the keys from the ignition but doesn’t exit the car. Max doesn’t either, eyes on him. They stay like this for the longest time. Perhaps they’ll stare at each other for long enough that he’ll have to start paying 20 dollars a minute for parking.

This is hard, because there isn’t time and because this isn’t the place he wants to be in to speak about his confusion, his sheer fear for his future or to talk about love. Yet he wants to, and there’s no doing that if Maxime goes now. And Maxime won’t stay if he doesn’t speak out now. 

“You don’t have to go. Not if you don’t want to.”

Max looks at him like he’s hearing him for the first time.

“Matt.” His voice is wavering “Why didn’t you give me the letter?”   
A pause. “I think I didn’t want you to go.”  _ I don’t think I do, still.  _ _  
_ “You didn’t say, for months you didn’t say anything.”

It occurs to him now that if he had told him then, if he’d opened even for a slight moment and allowed himself to be vulnerable, he wouldn’t have needed to sabotage his way through keeping his best friend. 

“I don’t know I-” he hesitates “You wanted it so bad. Everybody did. We bought you an ipad-”   
“The fucking ipad, I swear to God Matt-” 

Maxime lets out a laugh that sounds almost like a sob. He often gets cruder when he is stressed or emotional - in this case, both. He sniffles. 

“I didn’t think you cared.”   
“Shit, Max, why wouldn’t I?”   
“Because you never told me, for fuck sake! You just kept the letter and you - you left at Shariff’s and-” he breathes in frustration “Why won’t you fucking  _ speak _ to me?”

Ironically, Matthias doesn’t have an answer for him. Somewhere along the way, his work environment, his relationship with his removed father and his repressed desires had buried something in him, deep enough to damage his relationship with others. With his mother, with Sarah, with Maxime. 

For a while, they don’t say anything. Max looks out the window towards the already busy airport, probably to even avoid looking in his direction. He’s holding his backpack firmly against him. A plane is taking off in the background and in less than an hour, he’d be sitting in one.

“What will happen if I stay?”    
“I don’t know.” 

He shoves a hand against his eyes and leaves it there while Matthias is forced to accept the situation. Yet, it is so nerve-wracking and incongruous - why would Max miss his flight like in a 90’s rom-com with absolutely no promise of a better life - that he can’t repress a weak laugh. Noone would ever willingly choose to stay, but Max has asked for honesty from him and honesty he should have. 

Eventually, he drops his hand on his laps.

“Fuck it. Ok.”    
“What?”    
“Just drive, Jesus.” 

At first, Matt believes that he can’t have heard right, but he did.

He scrambles with his keys as he turns back on the car, before Max thinks about what he’s really agreeing to, before they think about what they’re really doing, before they let their head decide instead of whatever is going right now when they look at each other. 

As they drive away, Max seems almost angry but he can’t quite hold on a smile, mirroring the one Matt knows he’s wearing. This finally feels right, great even ; to be bare and understood, to be thirty and to do something crazy again. They chuckle nervously again, giddy.

And he’s got work to do, so much of it still, but he looks at Maxime and Maxime looks back at him with fearful hope. Matt wants to skip work and drive them all the way back to his room where they wanted each other so simply but he realises that this isn’t about his room anymore ; this could happen wherever there was Maxime and wherever Matthias would follow. Just that and nothing more, the only constant: Matthias and Maxime. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done! But also it's not. I really went crescendo when it comes to word counts but the more I think about it, the more I trust the way I cut the chapters and wouldn't have changed it so I hope it's digest enough for you all.
> 
> I'm glad I was able to write more about this fantastic movie as well as just being in your late twenties and male bonding & relationships. There's a lot more to be said on that but I think Matthias is a great character to do so. I was frustrated at times not being able to tell Maxime's side of things so there's already an epilogue in the making which I hope to finish one day.
> 
> Thank you so very much for all the kind hits, kudos and thoughtful comments on this work. It meant so much to me, and if you want to direct some of these thoughts about M&M at me in the future, find me at osterra-n on tumblr!


End file.
